Beyourself

Showing posts with label Beyourself. Show all posts
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Monday, February 26, 2018

Be Selfish, For Others

   February 26, 2018      


Build It & Let It Break
Selfishness is not the enemy we make it out to be, more of a misinterpreted / misapplied concept that we just projected upon the world from a lifetime of romantic stories about the hero putting others first. Truth be told, if you truly are going to emphasis the greater good, serve others to your full potential and really live that life you need to put yourself first, for them.
The creators, thinkers and artisans of the world are selfish, in their obsessive focus one creating original work for or from no purpose but their own, incredible gifts to the world. Nature and evolution are fundamentally selfish, survival of the fittest and complete disregard for the persistence of species.
But what does it really mean to be selfish?
It means that you care. You care so much about what your doing, creating and shaping that you couldn’t bare to see yourself operate from anything less than an optimal capacity.
It means that your first priority is your energy and well-being, as an exponential multiplier of effects to others; that you consider your mind, body and soul as a distribution system for good, as a platform of positive energy production to create, inspire and impact for good. And that you live this every day honestly and authentically with a sense of virtue. Selfishness is INTENSE!
If you intend to do that, to follow through to your fullest potential, you need to operate from an optimal state, to best give all you have to offer. If you’re tired, undernourished and inactive you’re doing everyone a disservice by limiting your potential, presence, engagement and energy.
It’s great to feel busy, to feel needed, to get things done but that’s not a long term strategy, you’re going to burn out or be operating in less than optimal state and missing out on opportunity. You need regular sleep, recovery, alone time, nutrition, exercise, social contact and to put yourself and your well-being first in all these areas if you are to live up to our potential to help, serve and develop your gifts.
Serve yourself, so you can serve others.

Let It Break

Many a word hath been studied and spread emphasizing the utter failures and borderline uselessness of “goals” when compared the design and implementation of systems.
Goals are positions. Comfortable images we’ve created of future and past. We get so attached to these never-ending dreams of tomorrow, of what could be and what could have been. Goals drive and support our lust and seemingly obsessive cumplusion to collect, consume and feel emotional entitled to a sense of ownership. But I must digress…
Systems form habits, impact behavior, require continuous monitoring and active engagement. They deliver results and lead to outcomes we might not have previously been aware of. I’ve left some examples in the comments section for your delight. For now, here’s a system to think about…

Let It Break.

That’s it. Apply it to everything. Challenge integrity and purpose. Trust in natures selective survival and the strength and robustness of what we care about.
Curiously experiment and question everything. Remove the protective blanket and let your / our creations crumble as they may. Uncover it’s true strength, integrity and limitations. To find and stretch the threshold. Live, learn and evolve rather than just relying on luck and wishful thinking.
Seems a bit ridiculous. Well, how about assumptions without testing? Or pointing at imaginary future points based on past experiences and assuming their causality and purpose with little more than an intuitive feeling? We can do better, for ourselves and others. By setting the intention to design systems that not only survive but thrive when challenged. So when we let them break, they survive and even grow.
This is the posture of cultivating mental strength, resilience and robustness to the limitations of our knowledge systems and cultural constructs. Of learning to love the process and regularly expose ourselves to forces of change. To challenge assumptions and remove / adjust those that influence integrity.
So, forget goals. Let it be. Let it break. Design systems for the best things in life to not only survive but thrive; in service of ourselves and others.

More…

Oh, you’d like some examples. Sure, what do I have to lose…
“This year, I’m going to: lose twenty pounds, be happier, get smarter. How? By eating healthier and exercising. By enjoying the little things more, reading and listing to more intellectual things.”
Sure. Sounds great. But lacks anything of substance, sustainability or commitment.
Instead of goals, think systems. “I’m only going to buy fresh produce. I’m going to pay cash for anything with refined sugars, additives or preservative. That means two bills and hard bills. Annoying. And afterward, I’m going to think or write down who I feel about that 30-min later.”
“I’m going commit to exercise twice a week. Every time I miss, I’m going to give a stranger five-bucks. Maybe twenty if you really want to make a difference. And on days I don’t go, I’m going to walk 20-min or even park a couple blocks away from work for the walk.”
“I’m going to get 8-hours of sleep every other night, remove all screens from my bedroom and purposely leave a book or notepad on my night stand. I’m going to smile or laugh every time I see a mirror or walk under a doorway. It’s ridiculous but it works.
“I’m going talk or engage with someone every day and ask at least one question I already know the answer to as if I didn’t, just so I can get a better understand of how others see it.”
“I’m going to sign up and pre-pay for a random class or course or turn my notifications off and only answer emails at certain times of the day. Instead of news, blogs and social networks I’m going to read one long-form article or scholarly journal a week. Maybe even write something meaningful or make an effort to call or engage with someone I normally wouldn’t.”
“I’m going to read 10 pages every morning or evening before bed. I’m going to write four meaningful sentences or questions I’m pondering a day.”
These are pieces of systems. These actually might work. It’s up to you and the end of the day but making it easier and more automatic helps. And if they don’t, you’ll understand why and can adjust, iterate and make incremental changes in the general direction you seek to go.

Junk Thoughts

“I’d rather be a motivated loser than a complacent winner. Losers learn, create action plans, make decision, adjust, chase. Winners just win, so boring.”
BEAUTY IN IGNORANCE
Suicide is unique to human beings. No other species harms themselves. Cows, live a perfectly still life, never a remote attempt to end life or any noticeable suffering they desire to end… what’s wrong with the human mind? For all our intelligence, it seems we can’t understand the beauty in ignorance.
THOUGHTS IN THE WIND
A thought is no different from a gust of wind or ripple in the water, it’s there, it intensifies and it leaves. Quite fascinating more in the behavior than of some arbitrary meaning that fits a character and story that we’re attaching it to or reaching to attach it do.”Hearts and thoughts they fade, fade away.”
FRONT PAGE NEWS
Front page news exists because of the existence of a front page. There is a space, place and need for it, that we’ve created. Just as there are headlines because we created them, the need for them and expectation of them. Much of what we see is an outgrowth or remanence of what we wanted, created or had (all past tense) not what we actually seek and desire — that space has yet to be created and that’s what we are chasing, curious of and creating for.
FROM GARY V.
Learning “macro-patience” means playing the long game with macro goals and understanding that it will take decades to reach it. And along the way, you need to be fast, fail, learn, experience as much as possible while staying focused yet patient on your macro goals or pursuits. And really “pursuit” is the word, not goal, goal is arbitrary, you need to fall in the love with the process, by the results. Surrounding yourself with things and people you love doing and being around makes everything better and easier to achieve, because you enjoy it that much more.
THE MEANING OF LIFE
It seems the only time we ask or desire the answer to which is when we are ourselves feeling un-whole or nearing the end and from what I’ve studied of those in these situations meaning itself is relative and derived from quality of our relationships and connections to others and our environment that we’ve amassed over our time. Thus, meaning or purpose is to create meaning by enjoying the experience of relationships and connectedness. Have fun, and do it with others.

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- February 26, 2018 0 comments

Thursday, February 1, 2018

4 Reasons to Solve Your Life Problems on Paper

   February 01, 2018      


Unsplash
Originally published by Stephen Guise on his personal website.
The main, overarching reason? The paper is outside of your mind. This creates several advantages.

1. Paper can hold unlimited data

If I give you a sheet of paper containing 300 numbers, how much of the sequence can you memorize in 30 seconds? Most people will max out at probably 10–30 numbers. But the humble piece of paper “memorizes” all 300 the instant they’re written. Unlike your mind, you have no data limit for your pencil.

2. Complex problems are easier to solve on paper

I was a math wiz. I used to hate it when my teacher told me to show my work. But as impressed as I was with myself, it’s easier, more reliable, and equally correct to work out problems on paper. Some math and life problems are too complicated to solve in your head.

3. You can’t hide from the truth when it’s looking at you

The mind is easily distracted, especially when faced with an uncomfortable problem. Most problems we face in life are not urgent ones. They’re things like feeling lonely, not finding your work fulfilling, and wanting to lose 30 pounds. None of these problems will ruin your life today, they will slowly eat away at your soul over the course of many years.
Problems often resemble a weak poison. You know something’s not quite right, but in time, you can get used to the feeling of being “off.” It’s only when you address and solve your problem that you feel the massive difference of say, getting healthier.
If you put your problem to paper–it doesn’t have to be public–it will be there for a long time. This is significantly different than a thought, which can come and go in mere seconds.
When you think, “I should find a church that suits me,” and have the same unproductive and passive thoughts about it for the 33rd time this year, it’s exactly 32 times more than necessary. It’s also not solving your problem. Paper solves these wasted “duplicate thoughts,” and makes it easier to see what actions you can take to move forward.

4. It’s much easier to focus

I have spent double digit hours looking at screens before, whether they are computer screens or TV screens (video games). I don’t know if I’ve ever sat down on my bed and thought about something for even two hours straight. The mind wanders when the eyes see things in the physical environment, and even if not, the mind wanders on its own with no physical focal point.
It’s remarkable how much easier it is to focus on something in the physical world. It’s just the way our bodies are wired. So you can have the same problem, one on paper and one in your head, with the former being dramatically easier to focus on solving.

Paper = Written Word

Paper has some serious upsides! Of course, when I say paper, I really just mean the written word. You can write things down on a computer or cell phone, too. In fact, physical paper writing is usually a bad choice for me, given that I type so much faster on a keyboard.
Some people use journaling to directly or indirectly deal with life. This is a great practice because it will essentially bring your issues into the physical realm. That sounds bad, like you’re giving life to a monster, but it’s actually good because the single greatest attack against life problems is exposure. The problems that linger are those that remain in silence, safely away from any of those pesky solutions.
Aside from a journal or in addition to one, I’d consider some kind of challenge notebook in which you work out some of your struggles on paper and then come up with suitable challenges to overcome them. To start, just spill out your thoughts onto paper, and you’ll eventually find the root.

Solve It On Paper Example: “I Feel Lonely Sometimes”

Why am I lonely when I have so much to offer? I don’t see any difference between me and the people who are happily married with lots of friends. I make people laugh all the time, people seem to like me, and women respond positively to me and flirt when I actually talk to them (instead of my other move of trying to get to know them by occasionally glancing at them). Hmm… I suppose one difference between me and those with robust social networks is that their lifestyle, workplace, and personality naturally brought them relationships, whereas my lifestyle/career is naturally very isolated and my personality is sometimes (though not always) reserved.
I’ve definitely seen a difference while traveling. I find a lot more friends and romantic interests while traveling compared to home life. I’m significantly more outgoing when I travel. It seems then, that in order for me to obtain the sort of social life I desire, I need to adjust either my lifestyle/environment, my outgoingness, or both. There’s no evidence that I’m unlovable, and there’s a lot of evidence that good things happen when I put myself out there. So, the solution could be as simple as joining more groups that interest me, traveling, practicing being more outgoing, or making a greater effort to socialize with acquaintances to see if friendships form. It’s not that it’s difficult to do these things. But they require INTENTION, and I haven’t been intentional, so I haven’t done them! Makes sense.
  • Challenge: Join a group of interest (look at meetup.com, church groups, sports leagues)
  • Challenge: organize more pickup basketball games to expand my social network
  • Challenge: create a meetup group
  • Challenge: travel long term
See how it has a conversational and explorative tone to it? I’m not judging myself, I’m not pressuring myself, I’m just thinking my unpolished, raw, honest thoughts onto the page, and seeing where they lead me. It’s almost like I’m venting to a friend, but also playing the role of the friend, trying to be constructive and supportive. This is MUCH easier to do on paper than in your head.
When you do this, it should naturally lead you to challenges that could improve your situation. As for the challenges — this is important — they may or may not be the solution, but they are a START. And I wouldn’t say that I have to do them, either. I’m stating something I want to improve and saying, “Hey self, if you want to improve your life, now you know exactly where to begin.”
Starting is everything! Even if the challenges themselves aren’t THE solution, they will teach me a lot and likely lead to a solution down the road.
Having the challenges on paper makes them much harder to ignore, doesn’t it? They’re right there, looking at you. And a final note is that the challenges need not be intimidating! Make them mini! Another possible challenge for this example is to simply say “hi” to at least one stranger per day. That’s pretty easy, and who knows what might come of it? It could lead to meeting new people, developing conversation skills, boosting confidence, or becoming more outgoing.
When it doubt, write it down!

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- February 01, 2018 0 comments

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

How To Change Your Life In 30 Days

   January 30, 2018      


Your identity is not fixed, but highly fluid.
Your identity follows your behaviors.
How does this work?
It works based on two very important psychological concepts:
  1. Self-signaling: which means that, as a person, you evaluate and judge yourself the same way you judge others — based on behavior. So, if you watch yourself do something, you identify yourself with that behavior. If you drink alcohol, for example, you begin to identify yourself as someone who drinks alcohol. If you wake up early, you identify yourself as someone who wakes up early. If you write articles online, you identify yourself as a writer. Thus, how you see yourself is highly fluid, and based on your own behaviors. As your behavior changes, your perceived identity changes.
  2. Precognition: which means that thoughts don’t necessarily lead to behaviors, but that behaviors can also lead to thoughts. In other words,common wisdom suggests that your inner world creates your outer world.Hence, “mental creation precedes physical creation.” This is certainly true. But behaviors (and environments) can also create internal states. For example, if you jump into an ice-cold bath, you’ll begin to experience a cascade of emotions and thoughts. Or lack of thoughts. What precognition shows is that you can actually PREDICT your inner state by behaving in certain ways, and by placing yourself in certain environments. Thus,change doesn’t only happen from the inside out, but also from the outside in.
Both of these ideas are strongly related to other research in psychology, which suggests that behaviors generally come BEFORE psychological states. Again, this goes against most common wisdom.
My favorite example is the research on self-efficacy (confidence), which shows that confidence isn’t what produces high performance. But rather, that high performance is what produces confidence.
Put simply, if you want to have confidence, you can have it. All you have to do is behave in desired ways, even for a short period of time.
Why does all of this matter?
It matters, because you have the power to radically change your identity.
Even at a biological level, new science in epigenetics and neuroplasticity is showing how malleable and fluid our biology is.

The Problem With Succeeding

Most people plateau.
Even successful people.
It’s actually very common for people who are succeeding to get stuck.
Think about some of your favorite authors, musicians, and even companies.
At some point, they generally stop being as innovative.
We all have that band we love, whose first album or two had way more soul.Then, once they became famous, their music became far more tame.
The same is often true of world-class chefs.
Once a restaurant becomes highly successful, they usually stop innovating the menu as much.
Once something is working, it’s hard to go back to ground zero.
In psychological terms, your motivation can go from approach-oriented to avoid-oriented.
Specifically, all goals are either offensive or defensive.
If you’re seeking to advance your current position, you’re “approaching.”
If you’re seeking to maintain your position, or avoid something bad from happening, you’re “avoiding.”
When you’re approaching, you’re less concerned about risks and more focused on rewards. You’re willing to take risks. You’re willing to fail. You’re being PULLED forward.
When you’re avoiding, you’re less concerned about the rewards and more focused on the risks. And you have no desire to proactively confront those risks. Instead, you’re simply trying to shield yourself from any problems that come your way.
I’ve seen this with many of my role models. For example, some of my favorite authors have shifted from approach-oriented to avoid-oriented.
I can see it in their work.
It’s become far more safe.
They are making far less significant ideological attempts in their writing.Their books are becoming more mainstream. Obviously calculated and less intuitive and inspired.
When you begin succeeding, your focus can shift from WHY to WHAT. Instead of operating from your core, your simply try to maintain success.
This is how you get stuck.
This is how you get confused and lose your identity.
Are you on offense or defense?
Are you approaching or avoiding?
Are you proactively becoming the person you want to be?
Or are you holding on to the person you think you are?

The Antidote: Never Stop Re-Inventing Yourself

In the brilliant Netflix documentary, Chef’s Table, which highlights the lives of the world’s most successful chefs, one particular episode stands out.
The number one chef in Asia, Gaggan Anand, is known for spontaneously throwing out his entire menu and starting from scratch. Even when his current menu is getting lots of attention.
This may not seem like a big deal, but it is.
When a restaurant starts getting recognized and certain awards, it’s generally based on the menu and overall atmosphere.
Being literally number one in Asia, it would make sense for Gaggan to keep his restaurant how it is.
But that’s not what he does.
Creativity, and always pushing his own boundaries, is what he is about.
So just because something is working doesn’t give him permission to stop evolving.
So he reinvents himself.
Over and over and over.
No matter how hard it is to walk away from something brilliant.
A true creator never stops pushing their boundaries.
They never stop reinventing.
Once you become awesome at something, use your new LEARNING ABILITIES to become awesome at something else.
The whole notion of “finding your calling” has led people to having fixed views of themselves.
There isn’t just one thing you were born to do.
You can expand and grow in countless ways. Especially after you learn the process of learning. You can take all of your experience becoming great at something, and quickly become proficient at something else.
In this way, you never plateau. You’re always growing and evolving as a person.

The 30-Day Challenge

Given that your identity is fluid and malleable, you have an amazing opportunity to redefine who you are.
All you have to do is consistently and boldly reshape your behavior.
You can do this in the form of a 30-day challenge.
What’s something you’ve wanted to do, that you haven’t done?
Or, what’s something that would clearly lead you to a place you’d like to be?
It could be 30 days of extreme health and fitness.
That would definitely change things.
It could be facing an extreme fear: like 30 days of asking people on dates.
It could be 30 days of writing articles, or filming videos.
Whatever it is, if you do it for 30 days, your identity will change.
Your fears will become cauterized and neutralized.
You’ll adapt to your new behaviors.
Your psychological state will change.
You’ll begin to identify with your new behaviors.
Will you have to deal with some negative emotions along the way?
Will you face a load of resistance and fear?
Will you want to quit?
The answer is probably yes to all of those questions.
But THIS is how you separate yourself from the masses.
This is how you make quantum leaps in your progression, while most people make incremental progress.
This is how you consciously shape your identity and future.
Where will you be in 30 days from now?
WHO will you be 30 days from now?

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- January 30, 2018 0 comments

Saturday, January 27, 2018

4 Steps to Getting Anything You Want In Life

   January 27, 2018      


1. Develop rare and valuable skills

2. Invest in yourself, your relationships, and your dreams
3. Be a giver, not a taker, once you’ve invested yourself in the right relationships
4. Make the right asks — and get above the line of “super credibility”
All along the way, WRITE IT DOWN, MAKE IT HAPPEN.

1. Develop Rare and Valuable Skills

“Don’t wish it was easier wish you were better. Don’t wish for less problems wish for more skills. Don’t wish for less challenge wish for more wisdom.” — Jim Rohn

In the book, SO GOOD THEY CAN’T IGNORE YOU: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love, Cal Newport debunks the myth of “pursuing your passion.”
Can you have passion in your life? Absolutely.
But healthy passion is just like confidence — you have to earn it. It is never compulsive.
Passion and confidence are both byproducts of living a good life, of making good choices, and accomplishing personal goals.
Most people are seeking the wrong emotional experiences.
It’s not “passion” you want. Passion just brings the whole experience to a higher level.
What you really want is satisfaction with what you’ve done. You want to look back and be proud of what you’ve done. You want to watch yourself expand as a person. You want to watch yourself do incredible things. Put simply, you want freedom and you want connection.
How can you not experience passion through this process? How can you not experience confidence?
Most people are self-absorbed. They want work that makes THEM happy — and most never get success or happiness as a result.
Instead of seeking you’re own success — develop a “craftsman mentality” where you develop rare and valuable skills through deliberate practice. Develop true mastery at what you do. Become world-class.
The craftsman is focused on what they can give to the world. It’s so much better to give. Getting outside of your own head is where you find true clarity. Helping other people along their path furthers you along your own.
Once you’ve developed rare and valuable skills, you’re now in a rare position to chart your own path.
You don’t need to apply for jobs.
You don’t need to worry about “gate-keepers.”
You’re your own gate-keeper.
Your “security” is not in anything external — like a job, a paycheck, a college degree, societal expectations. Your “security” is internal. You trust yourself. You have confidence. You’re in alignment with your core values. You are connected to your higher power. You’ve developed your routines and practices for making magic happen in your life. You collaborate with your environment to further your progress. You’ve developed emotional and social intelligence, and thus, can connect quickly and deeply with anyone — Because it’s not about you, but them and you. You’re not trying to escape, but connect.

2. Invest in Yourself, Your Relationships, and Your Dreams

How do you go from dreamer to doer? You start putting your money where your mouth is.
It’s seriously that simple.
When you start putting money toward your skill development, your skills begin to increase 10X.
You probably won’t develop “rare skills and abilities” without investing large amounts into yourself.
People don’t become Olympians on their own. They have coaches, mentors, and a host of other people helping them. As the brilliant entrepreneur Michael Fishman has said, “Self-made is an illusion. There are many people who played divine roles in you having the life that you have today. Be sure to let them know how grateful you are.”
There is a lot of time, money, and attention into developing mastery. Not everyone has a lot of money in the beginning. But as Seth Godin has said, “Money is a story.” If you don’t believe you can have money, you’ll continue to live low-level principles that bring about poverty in mind and money.
Dr. David Hawkins has said “The unconscious will allow us to have only what we believe we deserve. If we have a small view of ourselves, then what we deserve is poverty. And our unconscious will see to it that we have that actuality…”
What are the fastest ways to change your subconscious story about money?
  • Start giving more of your money away — even if it’s small in the beginning
  • Invest your money in your own personal development (even if that just starts with books)
  • Invest money in other people — key relationships (even if this starts small)
Some of the best “mentorships” you’ll have in the beginning are not in-person. They’ll be books your read and courses you take. You may spend a few hundred dollars over a few years. Although not a lot of money — you’ll begin to see huge benefits in that investment. You’ll begin to yield a 10X transformation in your mindset.
Eventually, you’ll start paying for live mentoring. That will also start small. You may invest a few hundred dollars for a 30–60 minute phone call. Although it may seem inconsequential, this act will change your mindset 10X.
You’ll be seeking access.
You’ll be seeking direct information.
And that seeking will begin to make a huge difference, because as Rumi said, “What you seek is seeking you.”
Are you catching this?
What once were thoughts in your head are now you spending money are bringing the world you want to you. You’re bringing your key mentors to you. You’re bringing your key information and skills to you.
You’re bringing it to you.
In the amazing book, WRITE IT DOWN MAKE IT HAPPEN: Knowing What You Want And Getting It, Dr. Henriette Anne Klauser explains the magic of writing down your goals and dreams.
When you write stuff down — especially in the PAST TENSE, as though it already happened, something happens inside of you.
You live far more in alignment with your dreams.
On nights where I write down: I woke up and wrote an amazing article (speaking in PAST TENSE about TOMORROW MORNING)… I wake up and write an article.
On days I don’t do that, I’m far less likely to write.
You can live your life with confidence.
You can come to expect amazing things to happen for you.
The combination of investing more and more money into yourself, your relationships, and your dreams, as well as writing down in DETAIL the completion of your dreams is hard to beat.
When you start investing money in yourself and your relationships… money will come to you. The money story in your head will change.
You’ll start writing in your journal with confidence: I’M WEALTHY.
You won’t be afraid to write down specific and BIG amounts of money that you’ll earn. And you’ll continually watch as more and more money comes your way. Because you’re developing better and rarer skills, investing in the right relationships, and making important stuff happen.
For you, it’s not even about the money.
Money is a vehicle.
You’re not working for money, you’re making money so you can do more and better work.
In the book, THE ONE MINUTE MILLIONAIRE, Mark Victor Hansen and Robert G. Allen say:
“Giving as you get acknowledges the Universe as truly abundant. Giving taps into the spiritual dimension that multiplies us, our thinking, and our results. The Enlightened Millionaire knows this: There is an ocean of abundance and one can tap into it with a teaspoon, a bucket, or a tractor trailer. The ocean doesn’t care.”
When you invest in yourself, your money story changes. You realize that money isn’t a finite thing. You realize that there isn’t just one pie that we are all fighting for. You realize that you can make more pies. You become an innovator.
Which brings me to:

3. Be a Giver, Not a taker, Once You’ve Invested Yourself in the Right Relationships

“You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.” — Zig Ziglar
I’ve been part of several high-level masterminds. At this point, I’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to be part of select groups, or to get specific mentorships. I didn’t come from money — none of my parents have much. I just invested nearly everything I’ve made back into myself — even when I was making less than $1,000 per month. And those investments 10X’d in money back to me very quickly. From small amounts to big ones. It’s having a vision for your future and knowing you’ll get it. Again, security is internal. Faith is power.
Unfortunately, I see the same things from most people, even at this level. They’re trying to get an immediate return on their investment.
That’s not how you go 10X.
This is the equivalent of buying a book for $25 and saying to yourself the whole time you’re reading the book — “Alright, where’s my $25 back?”
That’s not how you take an investment and make it much, much bigger.
What you do when you invest yourself in relationships is:
  1. Seek to be in a specific environment with certain types of people where ideas can pollinate and collaborate
  2. Give your rare skills and abilities in service to the right people (ideally the people who you want to MENTOR YOU)
Yes, the best way to advance yourself quickly is to GIVE YOUR BEST WORK to your ideal mentors — usually for free! Actually, you often PAY THEM to help them.
This logic doesn’t make sense to most people.
Pay someone to work for them? Yes!
When you pay someone AND THEN HELP THEM, crazy stuff starts happening. When you start being more giving with your money, your skills, and your time — to the right people — the money story in your head changes completely.
You realize you can have what you want.
The world will continually give you what you need.
Whoever you need access to, you can get access to. And not just “access,” but an intimate and deep mentorship and connection. You’ll quickly see that those you were helping become your biggest advocates. All of a sudden, you have a world-class network and limitless opportunities.
It’s at this point that you really need to gut-check your values. The reason you succeeded this much isn’t because you were seeking “success” directly. You believe in what you’re doing. You’re a convert to your own method. You’re not just looking for a quick win or trying to be “successful.”
Keep things in perspective.

4. Make the Right Asks — and Get Above the Line of “Super Credibility”

“Rainmakers generate revenue by making asks. They ask for donations. They ask for contracts. They ask for deals. They ask for opportunities. They ask to meet with leaders or speak to them over the phone. They ask for publicity. They come up with ideas and ask for a few minutes of your time to pitch it. They ask for help. Don’t let rainmaking deter you from your dream. It’s one of the barriers to entry, and you can overcome it. Once you taste the sweet victory of a positive response, you’ll not only become comfortable with it, you might even enjoy it. But making asks is the only way to bring your dream to life.” — Ben Arment

Most people ask for help way too soon.
You want to make your asks ABOVE THE LINE OF SUPER CREDIBILITY.
In the book, BOLD: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World, Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler explain that if you want to do something big, you need credibility.
You need to be believable.
If you want to get on a big podcast, you can’t just pitch yourself. You need someone whose already been on the podcast to pitch you.
Peter Diamandis wanted to start XPRIZE to revolution the space industry. He spent several years getting billionaires and astronauts on board with his plan, so that when he presented his plan, it was believable.
It wasn’t only credible. It was SUPER CREDIBLE.
When you develop rare and valuable skills, and have invested big in the right relationships — you’ll be able to make big asks. Then, the people you’ve invested in will actually make the asks for you, and it will be so much more powerful coming from them.

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- January 27, 2018 0 comments

Friday, January 26, 2018

The Best Route to Big Fitness? Small Steps

   January 26, 2018      



Here’s the thing no one tells you about the saying “go big or go home”: Most people who go big swiftly end up at home. “Massive training sessions might provide an emotional hook for an athlete to hang onto and perhaps even build some acute confidence in the moment,” says Matt Dixon, founder and head coach at Purplepatch Fitness and author of Fast-Track Triathlete. “But in the long-term, heroic efforts don’t work.”
The best way to achieve big results — in sport and other areas of life — is with small and incremental gains over a long period of time.
Here’s the thing no one tells you about the saying “go big or go home”: Most people who go big swiftly end up at home.
Habits build upon themselves, according B.J. Fogg, a researcher who studies human behavior at Stanford University, and someone I’ve heard present on this topic. If you want to make any kind of significant change, you’d be wise to take baby steps. In Fogg’s behavior model, whether someone takes action depends on both their motivation and their ability to complete a given task. If you regularly overshoot on the ability side of the equation, you’re liable to flame out. But if you gradually increase the challenge over time, what was hard last week will seem easier today. I’ve heard Fogg say that it’s the best way to create lasting progress. And it’s a rule that applies to fitness, too.
“Consistency is key,” says Dixon. “The surest way to real confidence and enduring performance is to progressively layer training — slowly building on what you did in the past, adding layers over time.”
The best way to achieve big results — in sport and other areas of life — is with small and incremental gains over a long period of time.
Dixon is not alone in his approach; it parallels that of the best distance runners on the planet, including Eliud Kipchoge, who won the Berlin Marathon in September and was the star of Nike’s Breaking2 marathon exhibition. (Kipchoge was just 25 seconds away from becoming the first human to run a marathon in under two hours.) Patrick Sang, who coaches Kipchoge and a stable of other elite Kenyan runners, told Wired that their strategy is simple: “Slowly by slowly…Every session is a building block.”
If the science is compelling and if an incremental approach is good enough for the top athletes in the world, then why do so many people still fall prey to a suboptimal cycle of big, in-over-your-head workouts followed by extended time off due to injury and fatigue? Dixon believes there are two primary reasons: a lack of self-confidence, and a lack of understanding the training process.
“Athletes feel the need to go search for confidence, and they do this by absolutely crushing themselves — but it takes so much time to recover from these sessions, or, even worse, they get injured,” says Dixon. “But when an athlete believes in overall progression, they don’t need to seek validation in mega-workouts. Instead, they execute day-in, day-out for weeks, months, and even years.”
Unfortunately, social media intensifies the urge to shortcut a consistent approach. It’s never been easier to seek and receive external validation for your workout, and it’s never been easier to compare your workout to those of others. On Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, it seems everyone is keen to post their latest and greatest big training day. But as I’ve written before, this is the equivalent to a 21st-century fitness rat race — and it’s one that all too often leaves athletes anxious, injured, and downright burnt out.
“The surest way to real confidence and enduring performance is to progressively layer training — slowly building on what you did in the past, adding layers over time.”
Even so, we’re only human, which means impatience is an undeniable part of our underlying condition. So don’t be surprised if at some point or another you find yourself tempted to veer off the path of consistency. When this occurs, Jonathan Marcus, head coach of the elite running group High Performance West in Portland, Oregon, recommends pausing to think like a gardener: “Plants in a garden fully bloom when regularly nourished with sunlight and water. Any of our chosen endeavors, including athletic pursuits, flourish when nourished daily by concentration and positive action,” he says. “Investing too much in heroic training efforts is like watering your garden for an entire day to excess, and then starving the vegetation of any fluid for the following ten days.”
I asked Marcus how he came up with this analogy. “Consistency,” he explained, “is nature’s rule, not mine.”

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- January 26, 2018 0 comments

Thursday, January 25, 2018

How to Immediately Stop Being Average (at Anything)

   January 25, 2018      





People think that being “average” at something is inherent.
You’re either born “great” or you’re born average. And worse, once you become average, then you can no longer improve. They believe it’s set in stone and there’s nothing they can do about it.
They are just, well, average.

Consider this…

The next time you walk into the office,and that little voice in your head says, “Oh yeah, I said I was going to spend my first 15 minutes organizing my calendar instead of browsing Facebook,” listen to that voice and do it.
And when you walk into your first meeting, and that little voice says, “Oh yeah, I said I wanted to become a better listener,” make it a point to listen to what others have to say before speaking up with your own opinions.
And when you get started on whatever big project you’re facing that day, and that little voice in your head says, “Oh yeah, I promised myself I would work on not being so distracted,” turn off all distractions and put yourself in a position to succeed.
When you leave the office and you think about what to have for dinner,and that little voice in your head says, “Well, I really want McDonald’s, but I said I was going to start eating healthier,” go to the grocery store and buy some chicken and vegetables to cook up instead.
And as you’re eating dinner, and that little voice in your head says, “I know I really should work on my startup idea,”instead of pouring yourself another glass of wine and turning on Netflix, make some tea and get to work.
And as you start to get ready for bed,and that little voice in your head says, “I said I wanted to get fit, but I couldn’t make it to the gym today,” then, even if you’re exhausted, listen to that voice and do four sets of pushups in the middle of your apartment.
When you hop in the shower, and that little voice in your head says, “I really should scrub behind my ears; I never scrub behind my ears,” listen to that voice and just scrub behind your ears, jeez.

As you fall into bed and reflect back on your day, you will see that “greatness” is not a destination.

It is not a title.
It is not some mountain peak you climb and then one day “attain.”
Greatness is a series of daily habits.
It is a choice.
Which means if you want to stop being average, all you have to do is choose, in each and every moment, to listen to that little voice inside of you reminding you to be great.
Thanks for reading! :)

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- January 25, 2018 0 comments

Wednesday, January 24, 2018

8 Things You Need to Give Up to Go Up Before the End of 2017

   January 24, 2018      


Photo by Jason Briscoe on Unsplash
Life is simple. There are three steps:
  1. What do you want?
  2. What does it cost to get what you want?
  3. Pay the price.
I can’t help you with step one.
Step three is up to you.
However, step two will trip you up.
Achieving anything has a cost.
The “cost” of something is this: what do I need to give up in order to get it?
When it comes to a short-term goal, you will have to give up significant things in order to hit your goal.
Here is what you need to give up now to be achieve something awesome before 2017 runs out.

1. Stop Rooting for Colors

“We’re often so busy cutting through the undergrowth we don’t even realize we’re in the wrong jungle.”
— Stephen Covey
If your actions cannot affect the end results of something, then you must stop paying attention to it.
What am I talking about?
Sports.
Why do we cheer so hard
As a teenager, I remember crying when my favorite team lost a game. I was crushed.
Later on I found out that half of the team was out partying the night before a game. As a fan, I was more ready and prepared for the game than the team was! I used to sit in a fan section and stand, cheer, and yell for hours during a game.
Let’s focus on the real problem: I was deluded into thinking that cheering for a winning team made me a winner.
Someone recently asked Gary Vaynerchuk about his favorite football team, the New York Jets. The guy ribbed Gary a little bit about the Jets. The comment did not phase Gary. In fact, Gary said one of the most insightful comments about sports I have ever heard.
“You root for winners. I am a winner. There is a difference.”
Stop cheering harder for people that you have never met than you cheer for people you love.
Stop committing more time to colored jerseys than you do to your own goals.
Colored jerseys. That is the difference. Maybe you are cheering for your school or your city. Sure, that makes sense. But I bet there are good people on both teams. Why are you rooting against good people? It is not rational.
Plus, what happens if your favorite player gets traded to a different team — a team that you hate? Does the player immediately became your enemy, or a bad person, now that he wears a different jersey color? Does that team itself actually change? Not at all.
You can still watch sports for fun. I have bonded with my dad and brothers through sports. I know my son loves sports as well.
But you need to stop cheering for jerseys. Or colors. Give it up if you want to move forward.
What else am I talking about?
Politics. Television. Movies. Gossip.
Some of you who do not like sports probably thought that rooting for colors only applied to sports. Sorry, no. It applies to many different areas.
Ask yourself: are the people that I am cheering for going to cheer for me when I am performing? If the answer is no, then it is time to pause and reflect. And change.
Stop rooting for colors. Root for good people to succeed based on doing good work. But don’t compromise your goals in order to root for other people who have no vested interest in your success.
Give up rooting for jerseys if you want to hit your short-term goals.

2. Stop Rationalizing

“We are not rational animals. We are rationalizing animals.”
— Christopher Sommer
Everyone wants to claim perfect rationality. We all want to believe that our decisions are all logical and coherent. We all believe that we are smart.
A study once revealed that over two-thirds of people surveyed believed that they were above average. Some people are lying to themselves.
In a given moment, we believe that we are thinking about our problems in a logical manner.
But that is simply not true. In fact, our biggest mistakes come from believing that we are being “logical.”
The truth is that most people make a decision with emotion, and then justify the the emotional decision with logic.
But why do you need to give up rationalizing? Because rationalizing means you are making excuses.
Stop.
Someone else has had worse problems than you and has overcome them. Probably multiple people.
One of my favorite quotes about excuses is from Tim Ferriss, who was quoting Olympic coach Jim Conroy:
Just remember: somewhere a little Chinese girl is warming up with your max.
Ouch. But the truth hurts.
If you are going to hit your short-term goal, you cannot make excuses. You cannot rationalize. You must think and act based on reality. If you fail, there is no excuse that you need to tell yourself or anyone else. Failure is the amazing opportunity to learn and begin again.
Adversity makes weak men break, and strong men break records.
Stop rationalizing. Start moving.

3. Stop giving your ideas to other people.

When you’re a champion, you have a powerful tool available to you. You can lower your voice, pause, look everyone right in the eye and say, “I take responsibility for making this happen.”
— Seth Godin
Stop giving your ideas to other people and then thinking that is equivalent to execution.
There is a release that you get when you tell someone about an idea. This is not good. There should be tension until the idea is executed. Then the release — maybe. Do not let the tension drop until execution is complete.
I have worked in the entertainment and artistic fields for some time. One thing that happens near-daily is that people will contact me and ask me to read their script, review their book, or look at their artwork. Implied in this request is that the person wants to know what I think about his art.
Here is what I think: it doesn’t matter what I think.
Successful people do not walk around asking what other people think of their ideas. Successful people execute and get real feedback in the marketplace — actual data. And then they learn, and either iterate or try again.
The truth is this: some of the best ideas do not make a single penny. Some of the worst ideas make millions of dollars. The only way to know the difference is to execute and figure out what will happen.
Without execution, there is no value in an idea.
Stop giving your ideas to other people and expecting magic to happen.

4. Stop being good.

“We are kept from our goals not by obstacles, but by a clear path to a lesser goal.”
— Robert Brault
Stop being good: not in a moral sense, but in the sense that good is somewhere on the scale that stretches from bad to great.
There is a fundamental problem with “good.” It does not last. It is like a piece of fruit that reaches perfect ripeness. The fruit tastes great at that moment. But if you wait too long, it does not stay ripe. It becomes rotten.
Our own skills and achievements are exactly like the ripening fruit. We need to be able to recognize the process of ripening and also the process of rotting. Often, it feels great to be good at something. It is exciting. But it takes that little something extra to push past the inertia that starts to set in once we can taste a little bit of the ripeness.
Here is the problem: when we are good at something, other people start to give us recognition. We can settle for receiving recognition instead of hitting our goals. Don’t settle! The solution is to keep pushing, regardless of whether we are “good” or others recognize our progress.
Stop when your goal is hit. Not when you are ripe or “good.”

5. Stop thinking that tomorrow exists.

“There are no ordinary moments.”
— Dan Millman
Tomorrow is a lie. It never comes.
Try waiting for it. You will wait forever. Tomorrow is a figment of your imagination. It is a thought. It is a dream. It is not going to come and it will never will.
The only day that actually exists is today.
If you need to act, it must be done today. No excuses. No mercy. Today is all there is.
Just because you fall asleep that does not mean that the rest of the world stops.
When you need to get something done, never think that you can do it tomorrow. As soon as you hear yourself think “tomorrow” — stop. Do whatever you need to do. The cost today is always less than the cost tomorrow. Always. Never mortgage today to get to tomorrow. Always pay the lower price now.
You start life at Point A. And you end life at Point B. Every day in between you have to crush it.
Stop thinking that tomorrow exists. It doesn’t.

6. Stop focusing on long-term goals.

Even the longest journey must begin where you stand.
If you want to hit a short-term goal, then you need to temporarily forget your long-term goals.
You need to sacrifice your long-term goals in order to hit a short-term goal. It does not mean that you should not have long-term goals. And this does not mean that you should only think of today. But this does mean that you need to so intensely focus on what is exactly in front of you that you do not think about your long-term goals.
When you are climbing a mountain, your long-term goal is to get to the summit. But your short-term goal is to take one more step. As you climb higher, each step becomes harder. You cannot focus both on that next step and also on the summit. You will end up tripping, slipping, or getting injured. You must intensely focus on the single, next step so much that you momentarily forget, or block out, the long-term goal of the summit.
Achieving any short-term goal requires the same attitude. Focus on your next step — today’s step — and be so intensely focused that you do not even think about the long-term goal — until your short-term goal is done.
Use the gaps — the interstitial spaces after short-term goals are achieved — to return back to the long-term perspective.
I love the story of the man sitting on the side of a mountain as he reads an engrossing book. To enjoy the book, he needs to focus on the 12 inches in front of him. He needs to focus on the words on the page. But to enjoy the mountain, he needs to look up and focus on the magnificence of the expanse before and above him. Your short-term goal is the book. But your long-term goal is the mountain. To enjoy the mountain, look up every once in a while to take in the beauty.
But when you are traversing the difficult path right in front of you, focus on the next step only.

7. Stop letting other people’s problems become your urgencies.

“Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent instead of what is important.”
— Stephen Covey
You can’t solve everyone else’s problems. You can solve some. Maybe a lot. But not all. So what can you do?
Pick the problems that you are going to solve. And then focus intensely on those. You will have to ignore the other problems, at least temporarily.
If you are going to sprint for (let’s say) 30 days to achieve a goal, then you need to focus on your own goals and chosen problems.
Tom Izzo has said, “Every successful person has a little jerk in them.” I think this accurately describes what you need to give up.
Successful people do not seem like jerks because they are mean, but because they are focusing on their own chosen problems, goals, activities, and not even giving any time or energy to other people’s problems.
Here’s another way to think about this: don’t let other people’s problems become your problems. Or don’t let other people’s urgencies become your urgencies.
Stop accepting other people’s problems. If you truly want to help, then set this as a goal and specifically act in a way that will help who you want to help.
Do not deny to the world a person who can focus and solve the problems right in front of them.
I used to do accept every problem that I heard about as my own. The reason why can be boiled down to one concept: I did not elevate the importance of my own goals.
If I were training for the Olympics, then I imagine I could tell everyone around me: “Sorry, I can’t help right now. I need to train for the Olympics.” I hope my sacrifice would be self-explanatory at that point. But for many goals, you treat them differently.
Previously, I would have thought that my goal is considerably less important than the Olympics, in my own mind. And so when someone would ask me what I’m doing, I would not even think about my goal, or that my goal requires me to sacrifice.
I love the people around me. I always want to help if I can. But here is what I tell myself: If I never achieve, or hit my own goals, then over time, I will never be able to help others — especially the people that I love.
And this doesn’t mean don’t spend time with your family, close friends, or other important relationships. If any issue arises in those groups, those issues become my short-term goals that I need to focus on and solve.
Do not let other people’s urgencies take up real estate in your mind without your permission.

8. Sacrifice perfection.

“Perfection is the enemy of done.”
— Jeff Goins
Perfection is a god, and she is mean, cruel, and unforgiving. We cast our work before her, so she can destroy it. For 30 days, we need to ignore perfection and focus on another deity: execution.
Quality is imperative, but quantity creates quality.
The filmmaker Robert Rodriguez has referenced the book Fear and Art as one of the most influential books in his life. My favorite story from that book is about a pottery class.
In the pottery class, the teacher divided the students into two groups. The first group would be graded strictly on quality. Those students would submit one piece of pottery at the end of the term and the teacher would grade the single piece on its quality.
The second group would be graded only on quantity. If 100 pieces of pottery are submitted, then the student would receive an A, 80 for a B, and 60 for a C.
At the end of the term, the results shocked the teacher. The students graded on quantity only had incredibly better pottery. It was not even close. The students graded on quality initially spent a lot of time on each piece. But the students graded on quantity rapidly made pieces. The intense focus on producing lots of pieces in a short time caused the quantity students to get better faster.
Stop trying to be perfect.

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- January 24, 2018 0 comments
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